FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2010, file photo, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, third from right, speaks during the first meeting of the President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability at the Treasury Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Author: Jarrett ‘very important’ in Holder continuing as attorney general

President Barack Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett has played a “very important” role in Attorney General Eric Holder staying in office, the author of a new book detailing Obama’s war on terror tactics and intra-administration relationships told The Daily Caller.

“She’s been a very important source of counsel and advice to Holder and also has kind of helped him sort of navigate the politics and personalities of the White House,” he continued. “Any cabinet secretary, they all know that the power center is in the White House and they need to have those kinds of relationships.”

“You can be loyal to somebody while, at the same time, sometimes being critical,” Klaidman added. “I think one of the reasons that Holder valued his relationship with Jarrett is because of her candor. When he screwed something up, she was willing to tell him ‘you didn’t do this right.’ To be able to hear that directly from someone is important.”

Klaidman’s new book reveals for the first time that Holder considered resigning during the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) scandal. Klaidman, a Newsweek investigative reporter, lays out how Holder was depressed and was going to quit in the fall of 2010 — until Jarrett talked him out of it.

“The loss of his mother, the continuing criticism over KSM, the lashings in the press and Holder’s sense of isolation within the administration had turned his job into a grind,” a book excerpt first published on Saturday in Politico’s Playbook by Mike Allen reads. “He woke up on many mornings with a knot in his stomach, not sure if he’s be able to make it through the day. … He told [his wife] Sharon [Malone] he didn’t know if he had the emotional strength to go on as attorney general. He thought seriously about returning to his Washington law firm.”

“He obviously had been going through a difficult time, largely because of the criticism he was getting from the outside on the KSM decision — from Republicans, from Democratic critics as well, in the press, and I think he was also very kind of tired of the internal battles that he was engaged in with the White House,” Klaidman said.

“And, I think, a sense of isolation within the White House,” Kladman continued. He always thought that the president was continuing to support him, but there were a lot of other people in the White House who were not happy about the decision he made and kind of seemed like they were trying to marginalize him or freeze him out. So you have that as a kind of a backdrop and then in the middle of all of this, his mother dies.”

“The combination of the sort of what was going on in his job in Washington and the criticism and sort of tense relations, and the really devastating blow of losing his mother, just put him in this funk,” Klaidman added. “He just was not enjoying being attorney general. He wasn’t communicative with his staff and he was having a hard time being engaged.”